Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Date of Degree

5-2018

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Program

Psychology

Advisor

Joel Lefkowitz

Committee Members

Harold Goldstein

Jaihyun Park

Charles Scherbaum

Logan Watts

Subject Categories

Industrial and Organizational Psychology

Keywords

dark side traits, personality, ethical climate, job stress, job-demands-resources, turnover

Abstract

Goals of the present research were to demonstrate that: (a) leadership personality is related to employee perceptions of the organization’s ethical climate; (b) leader job stress moderates this relationship for certain personality attributes; and (c) such leader-associated ethical climate, in turn, is related to employee turnover intentions and ultimate turnover (see Figure 1). Specifically, I investigated how individual differences in certain leadership “dark side” traits interact with leader job stress to influence the perceived ethical climate of their employees, to ultimately impact employee turnover intentions and turnover. Another goal of this research was to make unique predictions for the leadership dark side categories. Both new scales and a previously validated instrument were used. Specifically, the present research utilized the Hogan Development Scale (HDS), a well-known, validated, and highly utilized instrument to measure leaders’ dark side traits. Three new scales were identified in an archival dataset to assess (a) leader stress; (b) employee ethical climate perceptions; and (c) employee turnover intentions. Data were initially collected from a large organization headquartered in the United States, and represent responses from 498 managers mapped to team data comprising a total of 5,275 direct report responses. The present research employed both correlation and moderated mediation statistical techniques to investigate direct, indirect, and interactive relationships among variables.

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